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Restoring old photographs

2 October 2012 by

Old family photos are the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for family historians, but often when you find them they have been damaged over the years. I have been practising my photo-editing skills to overcome this problem.

I have used Paintshop Pro for years. I know it’s not the industry standard; when I was deciding between it and the similarly priced Photoshop Elements (the cut-price version of Adobe Photoshop, which is very expensive) I decided that Photoshop Elements was going to take too long to learn and I just didn’t have time.

That was years ago, and Photoshop Elements has come a long way. I have continued to upgrade Paintshop Pro until this last one, and I still like it for some things like lightening up the photos I’ve taken of archival documents. Last year I was persuaded to buy Photoshop Elements for fixing scratches in photos because it does it so well and so easily. They have really tried to make Elements easier for novices to use since my first trial all those years ago.

This is one I worked on the other night for a client using Photoshop Elements. The brickwork was particularly tricky!

Unedited photo

 

Here is the photo after I had a go at it:

Edited photo

I spent about an hour on this on my laptop while watching TV. When I got to the bottom left corner I just decided that there was too much woodwork anyway and cropped the bottom off. There’s still more I could do. I was a bit nervous about his eye but I think it works.

Photoshop Elements and Paintshop Pro are about $100, depending on where you live; less for an upgrade. Paintshop Pro has most of the same tools as Photoshop Elements but Elements has a very cool brush  that lets you paint along a scratch and it takes the image on either side and fills it in for you. It’s like magic!

Online software

Today I attended a Dear Myrtle webinar on free online photo editing software, and was introduced to PicMonkey. It is fully-featured photo editing software that runs online. You can start editing without even signing up, upload (or drag) the photo you want to edit, and the resulting photo is stored on your computer, not on the website. And it’s free! I was very impressed.

Have a look at PicMonkey. Save a copy of your photo, upload the copy, and see what you can do. You can always undo what you’ve done, or rub it out with the eraser, so don’t be afraid to experiment. And you have your original stored safely because you made a copy to edit. Always make a copy before editing.

I highly recommend Myrtle’s webinar for a demonstration of how easy it is if you’ve never played with photo editing before. She recorded it so it should become available soon.

Filed Under: Photographs Tagged With: ,

I love my new Toshiba mini notebook!

9 January 2010 by

Well, I was brave enough to take the risk! My new mini notebook is a Toshiba NB200, which arrived by courier yesterday. I broke the seal warning me that my new purchase may not function correctly and I’ve been playing with it ever since.

So far I’m just installing the software I need and downloading and installing updates, and the battery has lasted very well. The keyboard feels solid and the major keys are much the same size as on my standalone keyboard, although of course all the other keys are in different places – another keyboard to get used to. The touch pad is much the same size as on my 15in laptop.

It works well and quickly, even though I wasn’t able to upgrade the RAM to 2GB as the salesperson advised me. I’ve seen forums where a lot of people have upgraded theirs successfully, and I might consider that later when I really start using it.

I am expecting to use it when I go into the city or out to the archives, and for my birthday last year I got a mobile broadband … thingy (whatever the thing is called). My old mini is a HP 2133. The battery lasts less than 2 hours, and with Vista it’s very slow to get going – both reasons to leave it at home. If I use it on the train on the way into the city I have to take the power cable to charge it again for the ride home, especially if I actually use it while I’m in the city. I bought it too soon – at the time there was very little around, and what there was was small and made from flimsy-looking plastic.

It’s so small and convenient that I’ll probably use it around the house as well. The fate of the HP is yet to be decided.

Filed Under: Computers, Tools and Resources Tagged With:

Thanks for buying, but your new mini notebook may not work

8 January 2010 by

I bought a new mini-notebook, to replace the piece of junk I bought a year and a half ago. It has just arrived, and the label stuck across the opening to the box states, in part:

You must read and follow all set-up and usage instructions in the provided manuals and Instruction Manual for Safety and Comfort. If you fail to do so, this product will not function properly and you may lose data or suffer other damage. EVEN IF YOU DO SO, TOSHIBA MAKES NO GUARANTEE OR WARRANTY THAT THIS PRODUCT WILL FUNCTION PROPERLY IN ALL CIRCUMSTANCES. [Upper case in original]

Thanks, Toshiba, that’s very comforting.

Filed Under: Computers, Tools and Resources Tagged With:

How to start your family tree Part 1

11 February 2008 by

Over the next few posts I will be going back to basics. I will be explaining how to build your family tree from the beginning. My focus will be on New South Wales records but the principles can be applied anywhere.

What is it for?

First, you need to decide what you want to get out of it. What is your goal? There are many reasons for starting research into your family history, such as

  • to find out whether you really are related to Charles Dickens or Mary Queen of Scots
  • to find out whether great-great-grandfather really was a sea-captain
  • to see how far back you can go
  • to build an ancestral chart for your children
  • to find out what your ancestors were like and understand their lives better

What you want to get out of it will determine how you go about it. It will also help you to know when you get there! You may stop when you discover that there is no link between you and Charles Dickens, or you may become inspired to keep going and find out about your own family history – the heroes and villains and interesting characters. The goal may change over time and that’s OK, but it is still important to know what it is.

Start with what you know

Whatever your reasons, and whatever your goals, you must start with what you know. Everyone says this to you, and it sounds very boring, but it’s true. It’s no good tracing the descendants of Charles Dickens hoping that you will eventually find the link to your own family. It never works. You have to start with accurate information and this necessarily means that you must start with your own parents and grandparents and work backwards in time, up the tree.

Talk to your parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles and find out what they know, or think they know. Record everything, and make sure you record who told you.

Collect all the documents, photographs and other pieces of paper that you can find from your relatives. Old birth, baptism, marriage and death certificates; newspaper cuttings; school reports; old charts and reports from the previous research of relatives; anything and everything may be useful.

You can then start to look at these bits and pieces more thoroughly and decide for yourself which can be trusted and which may just give ideas for further research. A hand-drawn chart with names, dates and places might be very interesting and even disappointing if you think that it’s all been done already, but unless the chart has sources that can be verified then it is just a starting point and not the end result.

Recording information

You will need some sort of method for recording information and keeping track of it. Most of us these days use some sort of computer software, and if you are reading this you are familiar enough with computers to not be daunted by this.

If you don’t already have a family tree program, try one or more of the free ones first. Here are a couple of examples:

Personal Ancestral File is the most commonly used, and possibly the best, of the free programs. Published by the Mormon church.

Brother’s Keeper is shareware for Windows only. Cyndi’s List has many more examples.

Many other programs have a free trial version that you can use for 30 days to see if you like it before you buy it. Some no longer work after the 30 days without entering your registration code, which you will be sent once you’ve paid, and others allow continued use with reduced features. It’s worth looking around for a program that suits you and your goals – you’ll be spending a lot of time with it!

Test each program by entering a few people and compare how easy they are to use and whether you like the way information is displayed. Consider the features you think you will need – there is no point paying extra for them if you won’t use them, and you won’t use them if they look too complicated. Don’t pay for 27 different types of charts in 101 colours if you will only ever print simple ones in black and white.

Sources

Once you find a program you like enter everything you have, and make sure you enter the sources of your information. Sources are incredibly important and often overlooked by new family tree climbers. Eventually you will get conflicting information and you will need to know where each piece of information came from so that you can determine which piece is more reliable. A date that your Aunty Mabel told you may be less (or more!) reliable than the date on a birth certificate, but you won’t know which one to use if you don’t know where each one came from.

You may think now that you’ll remember who told you what and who gave you each photograph and piece of paper but in a few months or a few years you’ll lose track. We all do. Neither will you be able to tell someone who asks where the information came from. Your research will not be convincing to anyone else unless you can show where your information came from.

This will not be the last time I will be talking about sources – they are crucial!

Backing up

Back up your computer. This is another thing that people neglect until it is too late and then it is a catastrophe. Don’t risk all your hard work being lost when your computer dies (and they all do, eventually). Back up your important files and keep the copies physically separate from your computer. You can use a flash drive, rewritable CDs or DVDs or an external hard drive. Online backup systems are becoming more popular and can be very reassuring if you find a good one. I use Mozy, but there are many others, with differing costs.

You can also upload your family tree to a website such as Ancestry or Rootsweb to make it available to other researchers. This has the added advantage of acting as a backup if something catastrophic happens to your files, your computer, or your house as many of these sites allow you to download the whole file back to your computer.

Filing

You will also need some sort of filing system so that you can find that piece of paper again when you need it. Tossing it all into a box is a sure way to frustration and possible disaster. Use ring-binders and sheet protectors, or a filing cabinet, or scan all the documents and keep them filed on your computer. Make sure that you use acid-free mounts and protectors for original photographs and documents so that they do not deteriorate further, and label everything with as much information as you can – who is involved (especially for photographs), where it came from and who gave it to you.

Documents are harder to back up but not impossible. Scanning them means that a digital copy will hopefully be backed up with your family tree. Distributing copies to interested relatives is a good way of ensuring that the documents are backed up. You could also donate a copy of your research to a genealogical society such as The Society of Australian Genealogists.

What’s next?

Most of what we have covered today is preparation for the real work of research. That’s where the fun really is. We will start talking about research in the next post – what to look for and where to find it.

Filed Under: Beginners Tagged With: ,